Albon says Sainz near-miss ‘felt like NASCAR’

Alex Albon has described the moment he and Carlos Sainz almost made contact in the Paul Ricard pit lane as “chaos” after the Spaniard was given a penalty.

Following Charles Leclerc’s early exit from the French Grand Prix, the Safety Car was deployed and as a result many of the cars dived into the pits for the chance of a cheap stop for fresh tyres.

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Sainz and Albon were among those but the Ferrari man almost hit the Williams as his car was released.

In what proved a very close shave, the scene could have turned ugly as not only did Sainz come within centimetres of crashing into Albon but also a McLaren mechanic.

Sainz was slapped with a five-second penalty by the stewards, which the team chose to serve at a less than opportunistic point later in the race, and could only manage a P5 finish.

Speaking about the incident, Albon said that despite the unusual length of the Paul Ricard pit lane, it was “chaos” at the time.

“I felt it was a bit marginal,” he told reporters.

“It was just one of those things. Weirdly, for such a long pit lane it’s actually a very tight pit lane and it makes sense now why [the limit] is 60kmh. At the time it was chaos. It felt like NASCAR!”

Albon finished outside of the points for the seventh time in as many races, ending up P13. He said he believed he had been in contention for most of the race but his tyres fell away.

“It was tricky out there but